Mexican Coke Cultists

by Spence Cooper on 12/10/09 at 12:17 pm

Is it the bottle or is it the sugar?

Andy Warhol once said, “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it and you know it.”

He was wrong and there’s a Mexican Coke Facebook page with more than 10,000 fans to prove it. British television host and author Richard Metzger says, “I am a Mexican Coke fiend. It is so freaking delicious.”

Mexican Coke is “a lot more natural tasting,” another fan recently told a news program in Idaho. “A little less harsh, I would say.”

What all the hubbub about? Do the Mexicans have a secret formula? According to the NYT, since Mexican cokes come in glass bottles, Popular Science claimed that as the ‘most inert’ material in which the cola is packaged, it’s possible that glass results in a subtly more ‘pure, unaltered’ product than plastic or aluminum.”

Nope.

In the United States, Coke is made with corn syrup. In Mexico, coke is made with sugar. “It is true,” Coke spokesman Scott Williamson told the Times, “that different sweeteners are used by the company’s bottling partners in different parts of the world, for reasons having to do with price and availability. But, he says, “all of our consumer research indicates that from a taste standpoint, the difference is imperceptible.”

There’s only one way to find out: a taste test. I’m off to Mexico.